One evening at a party, a rather smart party that he had taken her to at her request, though not quite sure she would fit in, he suddenly felt ill—food poisoning or gastric flu—he didn’t know what it was. He caught sight of his face in a looking-glass, and it more than confirmed what he was feeling. It wasn’t easy to detach Deirdre from the young man she was talking to, but at last he did, and told her of his plight as well as he could, for by now the room was spinning round.

‘I don’t want to go now,’ she said, ‘I’m having a good time. You’ll be all right. Get a hot-water bottle and go to bed.’

‘Oh, do come back with me,’ he begged her. ‘I feel so odd, I don’t know if I shall be able to get home.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘You know what an old fusspot you are. I’ll look in and see you on my way back, if it isn’t too late.’

He lay awake shivering and sweating, with his bedroom door open, hoping to hear her key turn in the lock, but he hadn’t heard it when, towards three o’clock, he fell asleep.

His daily help was busy in the room when George woke up. He had had a dreadful night with bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea, sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneous; and the blackness before his eyes, as he plunged across the passage to relieve them! Once he had to crawl. He didn’t always get there in time, as his bedclothes bore witness.

‘Never mind,’ said the daily help, ‘I’ll change them for you. Don’t try to get out of bed—I’ll change them with you in it.’

He rolled from one side to the other, and somehow the distasteful task was done.

He could have had a servant living in, but most of his spare cash went to Deirdre, to keep her flat and her; for he had persuaded her, as much for his sake as for hers, to give up her secretarial work. With this she sometimes taxed him. ‘You’ve taken away my livelihood,’ she said.

She said, she said . . . Something that Deirdre had once said, and which he couldn’t remember, was vexing George’s throbbing brain when the telephone bell rang.

‘Perhaps you’d rather I went away?’ the daily woman suggested. ‘It may be something private.’ He nodded weakly.

‘Hullo, is that George? I didn’t recognize your voice, you disguised it.’

‘I’m laid up in bed.’

‘Speak a little louder, can you?’

George repeated it.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll come round and see you. I couldn’t come last night—it went on too late.’

‘When will you come?’

‘In half an hour or so.’

The morning passed; the daily help, who usually left at twelve o’clock, went out to buy some fish for his lunch—‘I’ll boil it for you,’ she said.

George protested that he couldn’t eat it.

‘You must get something inside you,’ she said, ‘after all that vomiting.’

How kind she is, he thought, but the thought made him uneasy—she was doing something for him, meeting what she believed to be a wish of his—she was putting him in her debt, making him dependent on her. Receiving a favour, he felt uncomfortable. But Deirdre would be here any minute now, and for her he could do something—but could he, bedridden? He heard the click of the key turning—Deirdre at last! But no, it was the daily help again, for sounds came from the kitchen. At last the telephone bell rang.

‘Darling, how are you feeling?’

‘A bit better, thank you, but not much. When will you be round?’

‘Isn’t it too bad, I’ve been asked out to lunch, I may not get to you till tea-time. I’ll make you some tea, but you’ll have to tell me where you keep it.’

‘I’m not sure if I know myself.’

‘Oh, well, I’ll find it. I must dash now.’

Presently the daily help came in, bringing the boiled fish on a tray, laid out very neatly. ‘And I thought you might like some peas and potatoes.’ His mouth watered at the sight of the food, but his stomach warned him, and he put the forkful down, while he tried to decide how serious the warning was. ‘Hadn’t you better have the doctor?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look any too good.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, you see my temperature is normal.’

‘Well, try to eat a bit, and then have a nap and I’ll come in and give you your tea.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ he said, ‘Mrs. Buswell’—suddenly remembering her name. ‘But Miss O’Farrell’s coming in to do that. By the way, where is the tea kept?’

She always left the tea-tray ready when she went away.

‘In the cupboard beside the fridge, on the second shelf. Well, bye-bye for now, sir, and I’ll come later on and give you your supper.’

‘How good of you,’ he said. . . . But he didn’t feel quite happy about the arrangement. He ought to have been giving her her supper.

Struggling with nausea he swallowed down some fish, picked at the peas, nibbled the potatoes; after an initial revolt, his stomach seemed to tolerate it, and, as often happens after eating, he felt better—well enough, in fact, to take the nap that Mrs. Buswell had recommended. (Was she taking one? He hoped so.) But when he woke he felt feverish and his sense of touch was out of order. Warm things felt cold; cold things felt colder; getting out of bed, wondering whether to be sick or not, he shivered in the August warmth. No matter, it was past four o’clock. Deirdre would soon be here.

Just at the moment when expectation had reached its peak, the telephone bell rang.

‘Darling, it’s me. I hate to disappoint you—if you are disappointed—but I’ve gone down to the country—it is so heavenly now, we’re going to have a bathe—so I shan’t be there to give you your tea. And I was so looking forward to it. But you’ll be able to get it for yourself, won’t you? And I’ll come round in the evening.’

‘What time?’ George asked.

‘Oh, any old time, but well before your bedtime. So long, my dear. Think of me taking a header. Ugh!’

She rang off.

George wrestled with his disappointment, but again and again it reared itself and struck at him, thriving on successive decapitations like a hydra. Even more than his body, his mind was troubling him, and if he tried to play off one against the other they united and made common cause against him.

He took his temperature. It was 101. He derived some comfort from the thought that his body was showing fight against the poison; but all the same he wished his temperature had been normal. Perhaps he had better call in the doctor. He dialled the number, only to be told that his doctor was away on holiday. Another doctor was attending his patients: would Mr. Lambert like to call him? In a frenzy of frustration George said no, then wished he hadn’t, and sheepishly rang up again to ask the other doctor’s number. Again his energy petered out; he couldn’t bring himself to summon a strange doctor. He worked himself up quite a lot over this, then lay back and tried to relax and think it was another person suffering, not he—a device that succeeds, if at all, only when one is feeling nearly well. He tried various forms of mental consolation—that he wasn’t bankrupt, that he was in bed, the proper place, not exposed in the desert being slowly devoured by ants, that he had friends who would be sorry for him if they knew. But would they be, when he had so shamefully neglected them?

This brought him back to Deirdre, who did know but didn’t seem to be specially sorry. ‘That’s Deirdre all over!’ How often had he used this phrase in her defence, in the days when what she was made anything she did seem unimportant. But now it didn’t help.

If only she would come! The outside door opened and shut. Someone had come. ‘Deirdre!’ he called, as if by calling her name he could ensure that it was she; she must be Deirdre, if he said so. But it was Mrs. Buswell who came in, and with the slightly resentful air of someone who has been called by the wrong name, a name, too, dearer than her own. Would he like some soup, she asked, and then a nice poached egg? George said he would; but wasn’t it giving her a lot of trouble? Mrs. Buswell seemed a little put out, then smiled and said it was a pleasure to look after him. Slow as usual at taking in the idea that anyone could want to, George murmured excessive thanks. ‘It doesn’t do to be always giving,’ she said cryptically. ‘People impose on you. You should take as well as give.’